I stayed until the crowd started to thin, until the hall quieted and the timing belonged to me again. Then I turned, every step deliberate, every thought coiled tight in my chest.
She’d let him close once.
It wasn’t going to happen again.
I took her in one unbroken motion, my hand closing around her wrist and my body following the pull. It wasn’t rough, not enough to leave marks, but there was no gentleness in it either. It was need stripped of manners. The door shut behind us with a dull, final click that seemed to echo inside my ribs, and in that instant the space became ours.
She stumbled once, caught herself against the wall, her pulse already alive in her throat. Her mouth opened, a tremor on the edge of words that would’ve ruined everything before it even began, but I didn’t let them come.
“Pro—Prof—”
“Shhh.”
It left my throat in a sound that wasn’t quite a whisper, wasn’t quite a command, but carried the weight of both. I lifted my hand and placed one finger against her lips, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to stop the air from leaving her body. Her skin was warm, softer than I remembered, and when her breath broke against my fingertip, it seared.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It pulsed, steady and consuming, coiling tighter with every breath she tried to take. I could feel the tremor in her body, could sense the fight between instinct and restraint building in her chest. Her heart was pounding fast enough that I could trace every beat through the air between us.
That fucking sweater she wore, green, soft, the color of calm she never really owned, didn’t hide a goddamn thing. I could see the uneven rhythm of her breathing, the subtle shiver in her shoulders, the way the heat gathered in waves around her. Her scent hit me again, the same sweet, maddening undertone that had haunted my sheets, my hands, my nights. I’d caught it once on her scarf weeks ago, and since then I hadn’t been able to wash it out of my head. I’d spent too many nights jerking off to the memory of it, chasing a ghost that never came close to the real thing.
“You shouldn’t have said yes,” I said finally, my voice rough enough to scrape. It came out lower than I intended, half threat, half confession. “To him.”
Her brows drew in, confusion shadowing her face, but I didn’t give her a name to hang it on. That fucker didn’t deserve to exist between us.
“I didn’t—” she started, and I cut her off without a word. I leaned in until the space between our foreheads was nothing, until her breath collided with mine, warm and shaking.
“You did,” I said, the words grinding out between my teeth. “Doesn’t matter if it was shy or polite or fucking innocent. You said it. You gave him a yes that was never his to have.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed, and I could see the argument forming behind her eyes, could see her fingers twitch against the wall, caught between wanting to push me off and wanting to grab hold. I wanted her to do both. I wanted her anger under my hands, her defiance in my mouth, the taste of her resistance turning into something filthy and raw.
“You don’t smile at boys like that,” I muttered, each word slower, heavier. “You don’t let them think they can touch what isn’t theirs. You don’t pretend to be just another pretty face sitting in a fucking classroom. You’re not. And we both know it.”
Her lips parted, the beginnings of a retort caught between pride and breath. It never made it out. I stepped in closer, my body pressing the air from her lungs, trapping her between the door and the heat rolling off me. My palms braced against the wall on either side of her head, the motion instinctive, possessive, my eyes locked on the shape of her mouth.
She tilted her chin up just slightly, enough to make it worse, enough to make it impossible to think about anything but the way her lips glistened in the low light, soft and parted, her breath trembling through the small space that still separated us.
“Say something,” I murmured, not sure if I meant it as a challenge or a plea.
But she didn’t.
She just stood there, her body caught in that same magnetic pull that had been unraveling both of us for months, and I knew in that moment that if I kissed her, really kissed her, nothing on this fucking mountain would survive the fallout.
“I saw the way he looked at you,” I said, my voice dipping lower, filthier now. “That little shit wanted to fuck you. Thought he’d earn your attention with a few fucking jokes and charm. Thought he could get your number. Take you skiing. Maybe steal a kiss in the snow. Maybe more. I should’ve stayed away. I told myself I would. Tried to be a fucking professional. But then I saw you, sitting there beside him. Letting him imagine he could touch you. That he deserved even a moment of your attention.”
“And all I could think,” I whispered, my breath fanning against her skin, “was how I’d break his fucking hands if he laid a finger on you. I’d ruin him for thinking he could taste what’s mine.”
Her breath hitched, trembling on the edge of something fragile and furious. I felt it before she spoke, the shift in her posture, the tension coiling behind her silence. And when her voice finally rose, it cut through me.
“Why?” she asked, low and trembling. “Why are you doing this?”
“Who are you to me?” she pushed further, her voice rising, cracking with emotion. “You say these things, you act like you have some claim, but what the hell am I to you, Professor?”
Her words struck clean, deliberate, and I felt them land in the space I’d tried so damn hard to keep buried.
“You don’t get to decide who I talk to,” she said. “You don’t get to glare across rooms or act like you’d burn every man I laugh with.”
I flinched at that. Because I would. I already had, in my mind, with my hands, with the sharp edge of every thought that spiraled into darkness the second another man got too close.
She stepped forward, her eyes never leaving mine. “Whatever he wanted to do to me, it’s not your business. Not your concern.”
